


of fly swatters and spatial, temporal dimples

by _bspctcldwrites (dashinaname)



Category: Gameboys (Web Series 2020)
Genre: Angst, Groundhog Day AU, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, This hurts, Time Loop, Time Travel, part of it at least, that one elephant in the room episode
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29285451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashinaname/pseuds/_bspctcldwrites
Summary: Or alternatively, Cairo's Valiant Efforts To Defeat A Parasite And Stay Strong Upon Sighting The Dimple On Gavreel's Cheek.Seriously: A Groundhog Day AU.
Relationships: Gavreel Alarcon/Cairo Lazaro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	of fly swatters and spatial, temporal dimples

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this while coming down with what I believe to be the flu hours before my first shift for the week and I am too turnt (thank you BioFlu and copious amounts of tea) to bother editing right now, so.
> 
> Vera, if you're reading this, I hope you understand. I will adore you forever.

I.

Cairo awakes to a cockroach crawling on the floor.

Mere inches from it is an open bag of chips he was snacking on the night before as he gamed on his pull-out couch until he passed out.

This happens every now and then. Cairo would chalk it up to his family’s being the fifth set of tenants of the condo unit if he could. Cheap rent is often the only perk of an _ancient_ metropolitan dwelling, and the rest of the package entails a plethora of drawbacks—rickety staircases, leaking ceilings, narrow rooms, thin walls, and a seemingly perpetual bug infestation.

In truth, their home of five good years is in no way _cheap_ and not too shabby either, all things considered. From when he was young, Cairo’s parents would swear up and down that they would grow up in comfort, and his parents are good at keeping promises, bless their souls. But Cairo wouldn’t be caught dead admitting that it’s due to his maintenance skills—or lack, thereof—that he was forced into cohabiting with the pesky critters.

This enc _roach_ ment taught Cairo the value of preparedness—yes, he _was_ a Boy Scout, and _no,_ he learned jackshit from camp; nothing beats real life. There’s always a weapon at his disposal, lying about in his room teeming with so much _stuff_ and suffering from too little space. And on this fine morning, it’s the fly swatter right by the edge of his makeshift bed.

Having conveniently woken curled to the side, he’s able to reach for the handle without much effort. The plastic mesh makes the faintest sound over the whirring of his fan, but the cockroach halts all the same, perhaps sensing looming danger.

 _This_ is the critical moment in the fight, Cairo realizes, and he snatches it. Before either foe can second guess their next move, Cairo brings his weapon down.

The _thwack_ is dulled by the _crunch_ as the insect is pressed against the tile. Cairo struggles to apply a bit more pressure to ensure his victory, roach entrail explosion be damned. A fly swatter isn’t the most effective weapon post-strike, and definitely not sturdy enough for the only finishing move that makes sense—crushing it just a tad bit more, that is—, with minimal area of damage to his already less-pristine bedroom floor.

Everything stills as Cairo listens for any sort of movement beneath the mesh. When he’s certain he’s conquered his minute opponent, he lets the weapon fall to the floor. 

He blinks twice, and rolls over until he’s lying on his stomach. His alarm has yet to go off. He’s allowed the luxury of delaying the battles that matter.

Of course as soon as he thinks this the blare of his alarm fills the room. Cairo curses under his breath, blindly feeling for his phone. He’s fully awake before he can hit snooze, so he sets out to make his bed and clean his floor of potato chip crumbs and cockroach guts, all the while grumbling.

Ten minutes later he’s gone down the stairs, working their small kitchen for the sumptuous breakfast menu of pancit canton—in god-tier toyomansi flavor—and boiled eggs. Other days he’d go with something less instant, but Paris isn’t a fan of his more exploratory dishes that the rest of his family would eat only because it was a waste not to.

They’re not fooling anyone, but they indulge Cairo and Cairo plays along. Among his parents and London, his father is the worst pretender, grimacing through gritted, “Why again didn’t you consider taking up culinary studies, Cairo?” or some other bluff.

He steps on the brakes of his thought train at that, loath to go farther down the memory lane. He didn’t choose to perfect the art of cooking instant noodles to get sad over silly things like memories, as if he couldn’t make any more. His Papa’s alright, he _will_ be, and Cairo will have more opportunities to summon The Great Pretender with his horrific recipes.

At some point between straining the noodles and mixing the sauce, fourteen-year-old Paris emerges from one of the two bedrooms, head a bird’s nest. The youngest takes one look at the table where two hard-boiled eggs sit on a platter, and the unspoken question, “Where’s Mama?” promptly dies on his lips.

The two of them eat in relative silence. There’s really not much to talk about; being a middle child, Cairo didn’t get to build a close relationship with either one of his brothers. He doesn’t have the fierce independence of London or the tenderness of Paris, two traits that score them brownie points from their parents all the time.

At least, it’s his excuse to explain away the pit in his stomach that never goes even though his Papa likes him enough, snark and all. Cairo’s always known why there was a wall between him and the rest of the Lazaros. And they must know it, too.

Every day he wishes the wall remained standing. The rift beyond, one that he didn’t know existed before everything crumbled down, was impossible to cross to begin with, both ways. All the post-demolition debris just made the endeavor a thousand times more perilous, and trying is bound to result in more damage.

Someone once said that deciding to give up also counts as courage, and maybe there’s some grain of truth in that.

He’s not meant for worldly quests, so he sticks to what he knows best.

☸

For Cairo, gaming and giving up are like tangent lines. Never meant to cross. Defeat sometimes intersects with gaming, as does victory. And where giving up is a line, defeat and victory are curves, crossing with the tangents every few turns.

Now, Cairo isn’t the most prolific student in math and Descartes must be rolling in his grave, but these lines and curves are everywhere. He doesn’t even have to look that far.

Case in point: Gavreel Alarcon, a line in tangent with giving up, every now and then crossing with victory and defeat (as he should, Cairo thinks begrudgingly.)

And, since gaming and giving up are tangents, then Gavreel must be in tangent with gaming, too. This analogy is, for all intents and purposes, only to practice the science of reasoning, and yet it bolsters Cairo’s far-gone conclusion that Gavreel is too good to be true. _Unreal._ (Then again, Cairo’s brain supplies at a speed he’d be proud of had it been for an actual exam, if Gavreel were a line, then he must be made of _real_ numbers, so.)

He shakes himself out of his stupor as Gavreel continues laughing at a joke that flew above Cairo’s head. It must’ve been some pick-up line that is once again lost on him, and Cairo wonders how much longer Gavreel can put up with these misses, not because the other boy has poor aim, but because Cairo’s a ring at the arcade, not a professional court.

He’ll have to hand it to Gavreel though, shooting his shot like that. There’s something to be admired in people who tirelessly do the same thing over and over. Einstein called them insane, but there is quite an overlap between crazy and genius, a hecking Venn Diagram that’s all but mushed together. Maybe Gavreel is a little bit of a fool and a wit for letting whatever _this_ is drag on for as long as it has while Cairo remains a brick wall that refuses to budge.

“I have a question,” he blurts out before he can even think twice.

Gavreel pauses mid-laughter, sitting up straight with a serious face. “Yeah?”

“Am I… am I not boring you?” Cairo says, neck burning all of a sudden.

Gavreel owlishly blinks at him. “What do you mean? You’re not boring me, Cai. You’re not boring, period.”

“You’re just saying that because you like me.” _Or so you say. Claim._

“Precisely. I wouldn’t like you in the first place if you _were_ a bore. Which, for the record, you’re totally not.”

Cairo frowns.

“Well, your flirting game could use some help,” Gavreel adds, smiling wolfishly, “but that’s why I’m here. This master is at your service.” The boy ends his little speech with a flourish and winks through the screen.

Cairo rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “Should’ve known your idea of gaming differs from mine,” Cairo says. “I’d bet an arm and a leg that you beat me twice all thanks to beginner’s luck.”

“If beginner’s luck was real, then why are you so bad at flirting, baby?”

Cairo flips Gavreel the bird.

“Now that’s more like it,” Gavreel says with a slow clap.

“Idiot.”

Gavreel laughs. “Well, alright, we can say I got lucky both times I won if that’ll wipe that frown off your cute face.” Cairo glares, which is actually a toil when Gavreel’s looking at him like _that._ “But Cai, I’m putting in the hours here. We can pretend that I haven’t done exactly that up to this point, but right here, right now, I’m not counting on luck anymore. I’m serious about you. I’ve always been.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Cairo offers lamely, feeling lightheaded.

“You should really stop with the incredulous face. It’s starting to get old,” Gavreel says. “It’s not so hard to believe that anyone can catch feelings for you.”

“Gav, do you even see your—” Cairo clamps his mouth shut, realizing with no small amount of horror what he almost said. 

It’s not lost on Gavreel, of course. The casanova visibly perks up, face bright. “Yes?”

“Do you even see your stupid face,” Cairo says hurriedly, “whenever you say stupid shit like that, is what I wanted to say.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Between you and me, no one’s gonna believe a single word that comes out of that mouth when you… when your face looks like—like that. Stupid and all.”

“Y’know, you lost me there. Last I checked, stupid and breathtaking are two completely different things, like, not even opposites,” Gavreel says, affecting a level of seriousness that makes Cairo want to eat his fist because it’s less painful than punching himself in the face, even though the latter is much-deserved punishment for failing to school his expression into one of actual displeasure. The mischief dancing in Gavreel’s eyes is a test of limits, and Cairo is all but a human. “In my humble opinion, you’re way off base. But I’ll pretend that I believe you, one hundred percent.”

“You suck, Gavreel.”

“Oh, but I _do_ suck, Cairo. I _like_ to suck.”

Cairo’s nostrils flare as Gavreel’s do. That they do for entirely different reasons is painfully obvious. 

Before either of them can throw another rejoinder that will just end in another tally to Cairo’s running total of defeats, an incoming video call pops up on Cairo’s screen.

“Gav, I have to take this,” Cairo says, spying London’s profile picture.

“Catch you later?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“TTYL, baby!”

“That’s not even a word—”

“But it is!”

 _“Bye,_ Gavreel.”

Cairo ends his video call with a pouting Gavreel and hops on to speak to London after counting from one to ten. _“Kuya?”_

His brother sits in his car, mask on, looking anywhere but Cairo. “Don’t tell Ma, I will.”

Cairo’s heart rams against his ribcage. “But?” he prompts, breathless.

“Pa's not doing well.”

A thousand icy needles stab Cairo in the spine. “What?”

“You heard me. My friend’s a nurse at the hospital. She told me about it.”

“Wh-what can we do? Can’t we go see him? Surely that can help? I read somewhere that—”

“Don't be dumb, Cairo. Of course that won’t help,” London says with a scoff. “You know what will? Staying put and doing as I and Mama say. Had you done that in the first place—”

“Then we wouldn’t be in this position, I know,” Cairo says, hands curling into fists. “But I didn’t know better then, _kuya.”_

“Well, now you do, so stop with the silly propositions,” London rejoinders, sighing. “Make yourself useful. Heat up some of the leftovers from last night for dinner. I need to run some more errands for Ma before I can head home.”

“Okay, you take care,” Cairo says, more from force of habit than anything else.

“Thanks,” London says, automatic.

When London hangs up, Cairo doesn’t call Gavreel back. He doesn’t return Gavreel’s messages or picks up when he comes ringing him up either.

He doesn’t want to talk to anybody right now. Staying silent is good. Staying put is the wise choice. Nothing good comes out of what he says or does when self-directed anyway.

And so he goes down the kitchen, does as London told him to, and sleeps that night after yet another silent dinner at home that has lost its warmth.

All because of him.

  
  


II.

When Cairo opens his eyes the next day, there’s a cockroach prowling his bedroom tiles amidst scattered crumbs of potato chips. He must’ve groaned in frustration— _“Again?”_ —or made some other sort of noise; before he can reach for some weapon to crush it, the critter has already skittered away.

It is with no small amount of awe that Cairo blinks at the handle of the fly swatter poking out of the side of his pull-out couch. He’s absolutely certain that he didn’t snack on anything before bed or stash the swatter this close, because, well, of the former. He didn’t remember playing on his Switch either, but sure enough, the console sits next to him on the bed.

Cairo thrusts his hand underneath his pillow to retrieve his phone. Finding it there isn’t wholly out of the ordinary, but he still can’t shake off the feeling that something weird is going on. His suspicion balloons when he looks at the date on the screen. 

Yesterday’s date is staring him in the face. Something akin to laughter bubbles in his throat. He must be dreaming, there’s no other explanation.

So Cairo breathes through his nose and hugs his phone to his chest. He has his eyes shut for no more than five minutes before his alarm goes off, and suddenly none of this is a simple dream anymore. It is yesterday morning again, which is impossible with a capital I.

Cairo spends a disproportionate amount of time staring at his ceiling, uttering a silent prayer that when he goes to prepare breakfast the pantry would be two packs of pancit canton in toyomansi flavor less. Dream or not, pancit canton gets old.

But even the Higher Power must be in on the joke, because Cairo ends up preparing the same breakfast that he did yesterday—technically today—, and not for a lack of trying. There simply isn’t anything in the cupboards to turn into a meal that Paris won’t wrinkle his nose at.

The clock reads eight fifty-six when Paris emerges from his room, wearing the exact same bedhead. Only this time, Cairo’s way too slow to set the hard-boiled eggs on the table, so Paris asks, voice heavy with sleep, “Where’s Mama?”

“She won’t be coming home until later,” Cairo says, and Paris collapses on one of the dining room chairs.

“And _Kuya_ London?”

“Went out early, probably.”

The morning goes by without incident after that. And by incident, Cairo means a deviation. He almost feels relieved. 

Almost, because while all this no longer feels like a dream, he knows full well how it ends.

  
  


☸

  
  


When Gavreel shows up a second time in recent memory donning his orange-and-gray-striped shirt, Cairo blurts out a question out of panic. “What do you want to do today?” 

The guy across the screen grins without missing a beat. “You’re really asking me that, baby? You know _who_ I want to do.”

Cairo presses his eyelids together, grumbling about bonehead Gavreel.

“It was begging to be said!”

“Clearly I’m the only one with a functioning brain right now so I’m gonna answer that for you,” Cairo says. “Let’s watch something. Any recs?”

“Sleepless!”

“Okay,” Cairo says, feeling hope flicker that this long non-dream won’t turn out to be so bad after all. It took him an entire half-day to admit to himself that he’s wishing for something else to happen, and he silently wishes this non-dream version of himself were able to reach through the screen to maybe embrace Gavreel out of gratitude.

He humors himself by hugging a pillow close to his chest instead, and he and Gavreel press play.

They make it halfway through the movie when Cairo receives the dreaded call, only this time, it’s from his mother. Flinching, Cairo excuses himself. If he braced himself for any secondhand news that London would have already shared, Cairo didn’t show it. He greets her with a neutral expression.

“Ma?”

“Cairo, has your _Kuya_ London come home yet?”

“No, Ma. Aren’t you going home with him today?”

“Not yet, I need to take care of a couple other things so I stayed behind,” his mother says, exhaustion heard in her voice. “Tell your _Kuya_ to bring some Lysol tomorrow when he meets up with me here, okay?”

“When are you coming home, Ma?”

Leila smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “If all goes according to plan, tomorrow.” 

Cairo nods in understanding. “Okay, take care, Ma,” he says, slowly, waiting for the reiteration of the news he heard from London previously.

“Alright, thank you, son. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.” 

Cairo looks at the screen long after his mother hangs up, his stomach swirling with hope and fear. He remembers Gavreel is still on hold, and with a click, Gavreel slides back in.

“Who was that?”

“Oh, it was Mama. She’s preparing my aunt’s condo for when Papa gets out of the hospital to quarantine,” Cairo supplies. 

“Wow, that’s awesome. What’s the development on Papa?”

Cairo chooses not to react on that Freudian slip. Even if he did, the cold that courses through his bloodstream at the question reminds him that the possibility of hearing a repeat of London’s news hasn’t been ruled out yet.

“Actually, I haven’t heard any,” Cairo says, and even though it is true in this non-dream, he’s still ravished by the guilt that comes with lying through one’s teeth.

As if on cue, London is calling a second time, and Cairo puts Gavreel on hold again.

London removes his mask so his solemn face is in full view, and it is all the warning Cairo needs. When his brother ends the call with the rope that holds them together frayed all the more, Cairo buries his face in his pillow, tears and snot be damned.

How stupid of him to think that this time around would be different.

When he finally faces Gavreel, head filled with that cotton courtesy of a bout of crying, he asks, “What’s the best way to exterminate a cockroach?” Might as well ask Gavreel’s opinion, if this sick idea of a prank were to repeat itself. He almost feels like it would. 

“Huh?” Gavreel says, mouth falling open. He probably registers the red-rimmed eyes and the barely-contained sniffling because he steers the conversation to Cairo’s desired direction. “Uhm, Baygon?”

“Not a fly swatter?”

“Gods, no,” Gavreel says, shivering. “That parasite harbors super duper smaller parasites, as in, microscopic, not only in its hairs and external skeleton, but also in its guts. Crushing it is like setting off a bomb of microbes. That’s like, _ew._ Why d’you ask, baby?”

“Nothing,” Cairo says.

Gavreel searches his eyes, and Cairo knows that Gavreel _knows._ “Please don’t tell me you left some snacks out when you went to sleep. Didn’t I tell you to clean up before bed?”

If Cairo was itching to reach through the screen and hold Gavreel earlier, he is positively yearning to be trapped in his arms now.

He hugs his snotty and tear-soaked pillow instead, the next best thing.

  
  


III.

The moment Cairo wakes to the same sight as the last two mornings, he reaches out a hand for the bottle of Baygon he’d placed right by the corner of his bed.

At least, he tries to.

The insecticide isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and his groggy movement has already done enough damage. Long before Cairo could wrap his fingers around nothing but air and sit up in surprise, the pest was gone.

He slaps his cheek for good measure, and it stings.

He’s not dreaming at all. He just happened to wake on the same day, three times in a row.

Cairo wants to be sick, but Paris needs his pancit canton. A thought that only exacerbates the nausea. 

He runs for the bathroom and empties his stomach of, miraculously, the chips from three nights ago. He would have to hand it to whoever thought up this joke. The consistency is admirable.

Bones like jelly, Cairo gets up from where he’s slumped on the bathroom floor and descends the stairs, gripping the rail for dear life. He spies the unmoved bottle of Baygon by the shoe rack next to the landing, the very bottle he’d snatched before he came up for bed.

He curses. There’s no vanquishing the cockroach today, again.

And all the other enemies, that is. Today is officially The Day Cairo Loses Not Once, Not Twice, But Every Time.

What a sucky day. So much for Caimazing.

  
  


IV.

When Cairo wakes _that_ day, he yanks one of his pillows by the corner, rolls over, then brings it down on the general area where the cockroach would be lingering if today were to unfold like all the other _todays._

The pillow lands on the roach alright, and Cairo relishes his victory. He allows himself to gloat until his alarm goes off. It’s his only chance, after all. From this point onward it’s all bound to snowball.

Gavreel is smiling when he tells Cairo that _when_ they finally see each other, he’d hug the heck out of him. If Cairo wasn’t so distracted by Gavreel’s dimple, he would have reacted more aptly to the subsequent innuendo about _embracing,_ but Cairo’s thoughts were swimming at the sight of that deep, deep crest on Gavreel’s face.

A dimple on Gavreel’s cheek… a dimple in space-time... 

“Do you believe in the bending of space-time, Gav?”

Gavreel blinks at him, confusion decorating his face. “Now _this_ is random.”

“Yeah,” Cairo says, voice hollow. “But do you?”

“Sure, I think I do.”

“So you’re saying it is possible to travel through time?”

“Maybe? Although for me, to see is to believe.”

Cairo sees reason in that. He wouldn’t be entertaining the thought himself if he weren’t living through it. “What if I told you I’d been time traveling?”

“It would be very difficult to believe,” Gavreel confesses, “but since it’s you, then perhaps I would.”

Which is perfectly reasonable, too. Heck, Cairo still finds it hard to believe that this isn’t just some drawn-out dream. And that he’s living every second of it.

“What if I told you that it was for real? That I had lived through today for four times now?”

Gavreel considers his question for a while, looking to the side. “I would ask you if there was anything you’d like to change.”

Something lodges in Cairo’s throat. Not very nice things happen to people who meddle with time, or so fantastic stories often tell, but his mind zeroes in on the inevitable news of his father’s condition all the same.

“There is,” Cairo says, not even bothering to correct himself. “At least for the better.”

“And then?”

Cairo stops twiddling his thumbs. He looks up at Gavreel. “And then what?”

“What happens next?”

“I guess I’ll have to find out?”

“What will you do if you don’t like what you find?”

“I—” Cairo starts, grinding to a halt all at once. He doesn’t know. “I don’t know.”

Gavreel hums, holding Cairo’s gaze. “Knowing that you don’t know, will you still change it?”

That gives Cairo pause. “I think I will, Gav.”

“I see.” Gavreel offers him a smile that on another day Cairo will read as anything but piteous. “Will you tell me when you switch it up?”

Cairo looks at the boy on the screen. He sees not an ounce of disbelief. Gavreel actually doesn’t think he’s gone insane.

The back of his eyelids have gone warm. “Okay.”

He squares his shoulder for laughter and a sneered, _Caimazing is no more. There’s only Crazy Cairo._

Instead, Gavreel says, “Thank you.”

When London’s call comes, Cairo ignores it. Gavreel sits with him through the thirty seconds of ringing, the movie they’re watching offering much-needed white noise. The ringing stops, the call registers as missed, and Cairo says, “I just did.”

“How do you feel?” Gavreel asks, voice soft.

“Sick.”

“Do you want to lie down?”

Cairo’s breath comes out in a shudder. “Please.”

Later, when Cairo’s on the phone with Gavreel, London’s message pops up. He cries through the night, and all the while, Gavreel watches him in silence.

It’s anything but and yet everything that Cairo wants.

  
  


V.

Cairo doesn’t make a move when he cracks his eyes open to the view of his gray ceiling. He skips breakfast because he can’t take any more of the pancit canton, but when London calls later that afternoon, he answers. He doesn’t cry anymore when his brother lays it on the table, but that’s because Cairo now knows what he’s supposed to do.

“You okay, baby?” Gavreel asks when he reconnects.

“Mm-hmm,” Cairo says.

“What happened?”

 _“Kuya_ said Papa’s not doing well,” Cairo answers, voice steady. “But that means it can only get better from here, right?”

And Gavreel, being Gavreel, acquiesces. “Sure does, Cai.”

Cairo will take it for now.

  
  


0.

Cairo wakes expecting a bag of potato chips on his bedroom floor, not an oily platter of fries. He fishes his phone from underneath his pillow and squints at the screen.

A new day has come.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all thanks to this [prompt](https://twitter.com/2x_bim/status/1343217998732005377/).
> 
> If you want to yell at me on Twitter, feel free to do so: [@_bspctcldwrites](https://twitter.com/_bspctcldwrites/).


End file.
